What Changed on 9/11?

A Radical, Extremist Cabal Decided to Use a Terrorist Attack for the Dismantling of Democracy.

Earlier this year, we had a chance to once again visit the World Trade Center site, which now has its pit partially filled in with the PATH train station for commuters taking the railway into Manhattan from New Jersey.

Is it more than 3,000 people who were killed in the 9/11 attack? Already numbers start to fade.

But, we do know this. After 9/11, all Americans were united against terrorism – and we had the sympathy of the world.

As we said, in an editorial within a few days after 9/11, the issue wasn’t whether or not one was against terrorism, it was how to effectuate a strategy that could best protect us from future terrorist attacks and ensure, through a multi-pronged approach, our national security.

The “war on terrorism” should have been just a part of an overall governmental/public partnership to protect our national security and improve our lives.

But as surely as four planes were hijacked on 9/11 — in large part due to Bush negligence in alerting airports to take special precautions to prevent hijackings (see point one in this editorial) — 9/11 was hijacked by egomaniacal men who saw themselves as “masters of the universe.” They were — and are – arrogant, disdainful of democracy, and destructive in their decision making.

They used – and are still employing – the tactics of the demagogue to subjugate the American public. It is the tool of all tyrants, whatever their ideological bent. Whether Francisco Franco, Joseph Stalin, or Adolph Hitler, fear of the “other” and scapegoating becomes an essential tool of eliminating opposition ideas and democracy.

We were hijacked twice on 9/11 – once by terrorists, and once by our own one-party Republican government which has shamelessly used a horrible incident for a partisan thuggish suppression of our Constitutional rights. What the Bush Administration seeks to do is to use 9/11 and the threat of terrorism as a veneer under which to build a secret shadow government that has no accountability to the process of democracy.

Make no mistake about this (and the Democratic Leadership on Capitol Hill still doesn’t get what is really going on), there are surely terrorists in the world (there always have been), but there are also enemies within who are actively undermining the Constitution and the very concept of rule by the people. For the Cheneys of the world, there is no trust to be placed in the “rabble” of democracy.

Being at the World Trade Center site reminded us of how profoundly we are seeing a struggle for tyrannical power played out using the well-honed tools of fear. The Democratic leadership on the Hill is frightened to death to challenge the failed Bushevik “war on terror,” which has been blown totally out of proportion for the purposes of consolidating unchallengeable and unaccountable power.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room may appear to be Iraq, but it is really fascism, the “F” word no mainstream politician of either party dares to utter.

One of the miraculous occurrences of 9/11 was that a Revolutionary era church, St. Paul’s Chapel — located on the eastern side of the street across from the WTC site — remained unscathed by the catastrophe.

Today its ancient cemetery — lying just across from the 9/11 pit — is filled with flowers and tourists.

On the fence around the church, facing the 9/11 site, is a sign that says:

“Manhattan’s Oldest Public Building in Continuous Use
Witness to the Great Fire of 1776
Host to George Washington on Inauguration Day

And

Survivor of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001”

The least we can do if St. Paul’s survived, with its pre-Revolutionary heritage, is to ensure that our Constitution survives.

For the Bush Administration to destroy the documents of our revolution – and the very concept of a Constitutional balance of powers and individual liberties – is, at the very least, to indicate that they are abdicating to the terrorists.

If “they hate us for our freedoms,” why is Bush giving into the terrorist and taking away our freedoms.

But the believers in Bushevism don’t really care much about terrorism. They care about using terrorism to amass powers that would change the very nature of the United States, turning it into a government not unlike the one we rebelled against in 1776, but with more Kafkesque and Orwellian powers.

Two things changed on September 11th: America was attacked from without, which set off an attack from the enemies of democracy within – the Bush Administration, the Republican Congress, spineless Democrats, and hack Republican judges.

St. Paul’s emerged unscathed from the 9/11 attack.

We are obligated to protect our Constitution, of nearly equal age, in the same manner.

There are some things 9/11 should never change: like freedom, liberty, transparency in government, and the rule of law.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL